Chkservice, an interface (TUI) to manage services in Systemd

about chk service

In the next article we are going to take a look at chkservice. It is a terminal user interface (TUI) to manage Systemd. For some Gnu / Linux users, spending a lot of time in the terminal performing certain tasks can be exhausting. For this reason Chkservice was created with the intention of trying to help alleviate the stress of these management tasks. It provides the user with a complete view of all Systemd services and allows to change their status easily and quickly.

It should be remembered that Systemd is a system daemon, which manages various parameters within the distribution. Systemd is a replacement for the already known init, that was in charge of the administration of the operating system.

When working with Gnu / Linux systems as administrator or user, it is common to have to manage various system parameters with which different tasks can be carried out. With Systemd we will be able to control the services and their start-up, identify the different types of resources such as services, devices, swap memory, automount, targets, sockets and many more.

Chkservice is a simple systemd unit manager that uses ncurses for its interface terminal. When used, it will be very easy for users to enable or disable, and start or stop a systemd unit. At the same time, it will also show the status of the units; enabled, disabled, static or masked.

chkservice running

This command line tool had its first release in August 2017, and it remained without new releases until recently, when version 0.2 was released followed quickly by 0.3.

In the first version, if the user tries to resize the window, the tool closes. In its latest version chkservice seems to solve this problem and also adds a very interesting search function.

Download and install chkservice on Ubuntu

The first version of chkservice (0.1) can be found in the official repositories of some Gnu / Linux distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu and distribution based on these, such as Linux Mint, Elementary OS, etc. To install this first version, you just have to open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and write:

installchkservice

sudo apt update; sudo apt install chkservice

Once the tool is installed, we can launch it by typing in the same terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) the command:

sudo chkservice

When we run this tool, it is important to remember that we must run chkservice with superuser privileges. Especially if we plan to make changes to the states of the system unit (enable / disable or start / stop). If it is not run with superuser privileges, the available functions will be read-only.

Although I have not been able to test this, on the GitHub page of this project, you can also find some third party repositories available for Ubuntu/Linux Mint PPA y Arch Linux AUR. Here it must be said that at the time I write this, it seems that only the AUR package was updated to the latest version chkservice (0.3). But I suppose that with a little time the rest will also be updated.

Another option from which users will be able to install chkservice is from source. To do so, they can use the instructions provided in the readme file of the tool. With them you can create a .DEB package or install it directly.

Keyboard shortcuts for using chkservice

The interface that chkservice offers will allow users to navigate through it using different keys, among which we can find some such as:

keyboard options available

  • Up Arrow ol → move the cursor up.
  • Fleach Down oj → will allow us to move the cursor down.
  • PgUp ob → move the page up.
  • PgDown of → move the page down.
  • It is going to be able enable or disable a unit by pressing the space bar.
  • For start or stop a drive, you just have to press s.

Users will be able to access the help screen that shows all available keys by pressing?.


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